Bring Me Back
by POPpop
Summary: "I have to go." Kurt only meant that he had to leave WMHS. No one expected him to disappear entirely, least of all him, and now time may be running out to get him back. This goes AU after "Furt".


_AN: This is a little AU fic that has been niggling in the back of my mind since "Furt". After Kurt leaves the New Directions he decides to do a coffee run before going home. Only he never gets home. _

"Sorry..." Kurt's voice wavered as he began to back away, the hurt in Mercedes' eyes and the confused frustration in Finn's making his heart ache.

"I have to go."

The words were barely more than a whisper, but he was sure the whole club had heard him. Kurt turned then, and with the weight of their eyes on his back and his own fixed firmly on the floor in front of him, left quickly out the same door he had entered only minutes before. He had not been lying before: walking out of the choir room was one of the most painful things he had ever done. As the door swung shut behind him, Kurt was filled with a wild hope that someone, someone like Mercedes, might run out after him and beg him to stay, to forget Dalton and just come sing and prepare for Sectionals and maybe after they could go get a smoothie or go shopping or do whatever, as long as he would just _not go... _

But if the room and the people he had just left were his haven, the emptied halls where he found him now had always been a hell. Kurt glanced around, seeing the lockers he had been shoved into, the door to the (girl's) restroom where he had washed off sticky, stinging slushie and scrubbed desperately at his clothes to prevent the stains from setting in, the door to the boy's locker room where...

Kurt was suddenly fiercely glad that he had allowed Burt and Carole to clean out his locker and take all of his stuff home with them (though he had managed to snatch the picture Blaine had given him and stuff it in his bag before Burt saw, thank Cheesus). All he wanted to do now was get out. The wild hope that someone would come after him turned into the fear that someone would, because he had made the decision now and as much as it pained him to leave, he couldn't face another day of horror, not when he had been given another option. He wouldn't become a victim or a statistic; it was his turn to feel like a normal kid in high school instead of a freaky outsider. And he needed to leave now, because he couldn't remain so close to the only people who could make him want to stay, the only people who had ever made his time at William McKinley High worth anything.

His own steps seemed to echo impossibly loud as he made his way to the front entrance, and then he was outside and there was no echo, just the slight crunch of gravel under his feet as he strode briskly across the parking lot to his black Navigator. He looked back once and might have felt another pang of misgiving as he regarded WMHS, which was not a bad-looking school all told, if it weren't also for the dumpster in his direct line of vision. Instead Kurt climbed into his car, jammed his keys into the ignition, cranked the music up and drove out, taking a right at the last minute, rather than the usual left turn that would have taken him home. At the moment he found himself in serious need of a venti Caramel Machiatto loaded with as many calories as could possibly be stuffed into 20 ounce cup.

POPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOP

Jeremy Kidney had been a janitor at McKinley for seven years. He was large and didn't speak much and liked nice cars, though he had never been able to afford one for himself. For the past year or so he had noticed absolutely beautiful black Lincoln Navigator in the school parking lot and had once or twice stopped a couple of the football players from tagging or keying it. He didn't involve himself often in the student's lives, but a vehicle like that ought to be protected. He saw it pull out that day as he carried two full trash bags to the dumpsters, and took a moment to admire it as it sped off. It was lucky he did, because it was the last time he would ever see it.

_AN: Reviews make excellent Christmas presents._


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